


hit the dirt

by peterspajamas



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Attempted Murder, Buried Alive, Dead May Parker (Spider-Man), Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Minor Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Peter Parker Doesn't Know Tony Stark, Whump, a little better, as in someone drugged peter, does it get better by the end? idk, im so sorry i love her so much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 07:13:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29962803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterspajamas/pseuds/peterspajamas
Summary: They buried him in the dirt a long ways outside of Manhattan, where no one would find him. Any normal human would be dead from those drugs, but Peter is in a grave and breathing.‘Let’s just get ourselves situated, like this, and we go from there. What were you doing in the forest all alone?’ Mr. Stark jerks a finger backwards.Peter goes quiet.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 19
Kudos: 120
Collections: 2021 Irondad Sprint Event





	hit the dirt

**Author's Note:**

> I'D LIKE TO SAY IT AGAIN IF YOU KNOW ME FROM THE SUPERNATURAL FANDOM? RESPECTFULLY, NO YOU DON'T! THIS ISN'T FOR YOU!
> 
> this was my backup fic for the whump sprint event! it's a buried alive fic, TWs for that (also i'm somewhat claustrophobic i shouldn't have written this haha)) attempted murder by overdose. 
> 
> i'd also like to say, i'm sure it goes without saying but like??? real foster parent situations are never like this. there are monthly check ins, there are a lot of background checks, there is a fuckton of work that goes into making sure kids are in good situations. almost all foster parents are caring, giving, lovely people and this portrayal is fully and completely inaccurate. like. i'd like to reiterate, no one is like this lol

Dirt. In his mouth. On his arms, his trembling legs, trickling down bit by bit. 

Peter wakes up here. Here, under the ground, face pressed onto a moving, dark brown piece of dirt. A worm is on there. He stares at the ringed flesh for a moment, shuddering. There is dirt behind his neck and soil pressing on his legs. He imagines- he imagines that this is how a corpse feels. Under the ground. Immovable. He tries- he tries to move. He tries so hard. But if the car caving in all those months ago was scary, this is even worse. 

His chest heaves with breath; he’s on his back and there are pounds of soil on top of him. Peter wheezes. A short scream punctuates the silence.

His mouth is pressed to the ground and air is running out. His eyes are mostly blind, only dark, blackened dirt in front of him. The soil under his mouth suffocates. He is dying as he thinks. Cotton fog and nausea mix for his attention. Air is running out. Air is leaving his lungs and it isn’t coming back. A coffin would have been better. ‘C’mon,’ he whimpers, choking on dirt and laying back so it doesn’t get down his throat.  _ Spiderman,  _ he finishes in his head.  _ C’mon, Spider-man.  _

He sniffles, tears rushing down his face, and dirt gets trapped in his nose, too. It’s so dark. He’s done darkness, even mostly darkness. Before this, his foster mom locked him in a closet for a day. That was dark. This is slimy and impossible to stop. It forces him to shut his eyes and not notice the difference. His curls are soft but the dirt is rough. 

He’s wearing his favorite pajama pants.

Air is running out. 

Slowly, he pushes up with one arm, choking on more dirt. He’s felt this before. In the bruised neck, the- the ventilator after the car crash, when they told him May was  _ dead _ . This, the muscle of his throat swallowing on dust, it is worse than anything else. He gags and clamps his mouth shut so nothing enters, the hand slowly pushing up again. A few more tears leak from his red eyes. 

His hand breaks open onto the soil, two fingers waving in the wind, and he suppresses a sob into the bottom of the grave. He pushes up. Little cupfuls of dirt slowly start to let snatches of air back in, blessed relief. The pressure eases enough that he rolls over, taking a lungful of air. Real air. 

He doesn’t know how he got here. He thinks it was Carol and David, his foster parents. Ordinary name. But there’s a needle prick on his forearm and it’s so sore and numb that Peter thinks of poison. He got placed with them three weeks ago and they’re a nightmare. In the middle of Manhattan- they’re so rich- he’s been locked in their apartment for weeks on end. He doesn’t know, though, doesn’t understand, as he takes in rich lungfuls of air. When he finally stands on shaky legs out of the shallow grave, the sight is almost too much to bear. A cloudy sunset. A creek trickling past. A single shovel resting by a tree.

He starts walking. 

He can’t go back, not to his grave. He’s come so close to dying today. A few more minutes unconscious, maybe if they knew about his mutation he’d be- he walks across decomposing leaves and twilight. It’s so dark. His top half is naked and he shivers because of it, relying only on starlight to keep him on a path. Creatures rustle. 

On a tree, there’s a bird’s nest, and a squirrel is chewing on a nut a few feet away. Peter wades barefoot through the creek, numb up to his ankles. He is too cold to really be alive, surely. Surely he’s dead. The grip of a ventilator squeezes again, until he’s choking, gagging up dirt and a dead bug onto the forest floor. Lifeless hands pet his chest until it is not a churning stand mixer putting mushrooms together with rat poison and muddy pond water. 

The pants are Iron Man themed, who has always been his favorite, and sometimes is the only thing that makes him feel good nowadays. His favorite pajama pants. They make him want to sleep; he is exhausted like a very old dog is. 

They’re ruined. The cuffs are torn and the waistband is ripped open, not to mention the dirt. He swallows a sob but it’s just dust, nothing goes down at all, and he’s crying again, shoulders hunched forward. He walks like the shy boy’s bicycle, stopping and starting and slow, running on nothing but still moving anyway. Somehow still moving. ‘Help?’ His voice is too small to hear.

A rabbit darts past. Cougars are out this year. He tries to stick close to the trees, breaking twigs underfoot and making leaves crackle. He blinks a moment later in the face of headlights as a car races past on the asphalt. It’s shiny, and Peter realizes that it is raining at the same moment he feels hot tears and cold water hitting his cheeks.    
  
He stands there, seconds stretching far. Just standing. Watching headlights pass his invisible body. He’s soaked through and exhausted. He coughs again, weakly. A car rolls to a stop, jerking off the side of the road. Peter’s picking at his knuckles and he thinks, for some strange reason, that he’s invisible. 

‘Kid? You hitch hiking?’ the man asks cautiously. His hair seems blond at the ends, but it’s quickly getting soaked. Peter blinks slowly at him. 

Like he has noticed already, he is wet all the way through. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Yeah, hitch hiking.’

The man, who is wearing a dark red parka and a comfortable sweater- oh, the fragments in Peter’s chest are jealousy- helps him, leading him down the road to the car. Peter clutches the man’s strong arm, his wrist so small, in comparison, and stumbles over his feet. Maybe it’s a mistake to follow him. (How much worse could it get? He’s just been buried alive. A stranger on the road could never make it worse.)

‘Hell,’ the man says, gently sweeping Peter into a bridal carry. He kicks out, before realizing that it’s only because his feet are bare. A gash is dripping blood into the road.

The door opens and they slide in, Peter fuzzy and exhausted. ‘Who was it, Steve?’ Tony Stark asks casually. Peter’s eyes drift to the pajama pants and he coughs up snot and dirt. ‘Oh my God.’ 

Peter’s spine straightens. He can’t- this has to be done right. He can’t be lazy and entitled. ‘Peter Parker,’ he says, tucking his feet under the seat. 

‘Tony Stark. I like the pants,’ he says carefully. Peter’s smile dips down low. 

‘Nice of you to say that,’ he says, measuring his breath. Air is here. The door closes and his stomach jerks. 

‘He needs shoes.’ Peter’s eyes glance over to the first man, the blond one. ‘Do we have any extra shoes?’ It is urgent in the way things haven’t been for so long for Peter, the way that dirt on all sides, his neck and his legs and his eyes was. 

‘I’m a hitchhiker,’ he explains. No one seems to believe him. 

Mr. Stark hesitates. ‘Where you going? What-’

Peter cuts him off. ‘I need to get to Manhattan. That’s where I live.’ What happened? He can’t go to Carol again. They think he’s dead. They think they’ve killed him. They tried to kill him. 

‘Honey, breathe with me.’ Mr. Stark’s voice sounds awful and his fingers are drumming insistently on the steering wheel. ‘Let’s just get ourselves situated, like this, and we go from there. What were you doing in the forest all alone?’ He jerks a finger backwards. 

Peter goes quiet. 

‘Or easier. What kind of music?’ 

Peter smiles, forced. ‘Whatever’s on the radio.’ Iron Man is here but it’s whipping his heart into shreds, tiny pieces, to be speaking. 

A slow beat, twanging guitar, fills the car. ‘You have dirt on your shoulders.’ Captain America brushes it off of him, hands large but gentle. Peter blinks quickly, guts rising into his throat. The music gets lost in him, for a moment. He jerks. Flinches. ‘Kid. What happened?’

There are those pesky memories again, of waking up surrounded on all sides by dirt. Arms, legs, chest, neck, weighed down by soil. ‘I think they tried to kill me,’ he says slowly. ‘I- I was in a grave.’ 

If he listens carefully, he can hear the frantic beat of Tony Stark’s heart in the driver’s seat. ‘Your parents? Your friends.”

‘M an orphan,’ he murmurs roughly. ‘My foster parents.’ 

Steve slowly wraps his arm around Peter. He leans into the touch, freezing, skinny arms liking the warmth. ‘Do you know anything else about what happened?’ Peter shakes his head. 

The two of them meet eyes and Peter observes, gaze flitting around. ‘We call CPS.’ They had tried to kill him, to, to murder him into a shallow grave, so he doesn’t have a problem with that idea. He’d almost died. Almost dead. A pang in his heart twists his poor guts around like they’re a slinky before he stills. ‘We’re registered foster parents, in case Clint and Laura…’

‘And you’re over thirteen,’ Mr. Stark agrees. ‘You choose your preferred guardian.’ Peter thinks he knows what they’re offering. 

The car ride is slow, and mostly dominated by phone calls and the  _ rat a tat tat _ of Mr. Stark’s fingers on the dashboard. They pull through the city in slow motion. Peter is still  _ soaked _ . 

The storm has brewed and now it is thundering around them, torrents of rain on the car and thunder in the sky. Peter is wide awake, climbing out of the car in one smooth movements, hands on his wrists. His palms brace on the bones there, a bracelet of warmth. He registers the cracks of lightning as the elevator goes up, dimly.

Every foot makes him lighter, until he’s a helium balloon, looking down at the city from the penthouse. ‘Kid,’ Mr. Stark says, forcefully, anxiously. 

‘Yeah?’ His hair, wet with mud, smears a streak of patchy dirt on his cheek, and he flips it out of the way. The memory is burned vividly to his brain. The night is going to stick. 

‘Your pants are ruined. I’m going to bring you new ones. Got it?’ His hands are warm, closing around Peter’s naked shoulders. 

Slowly, very slowly, Peter droops. He rubs at his face with the palm of his dirty hand and somehow, through divine intervention, Mr. Stark slowly brings him into a hug. On the one hand- on one hand, he is a stranger, but on the other, Peter wants a hug and Mr. Stark is warm and somewhat familiar. He pets the nape of Peter’s neck and it brings out a tiny sigh of contentment. 

‘Jesus. Hey. We have a spare bedroom, Steve’s taking care of the calls, you sit tight. Shower in there. Is it alright if I bring you a cup of, uh, tea or something?’

‘Sounds good. Thank you,’ Peter echoes the manners that have been drilled into him since Ben took him in, and Mr. Stark smiles warmly. 

The shower is hot. The claustrophobia washes away, a little bit, with every swipe of the sponge. Words flurry on the other side of the wall, but he’s somewhere else, tucked into the bathroom and taking deep breaths, with his head leaning against the shower wall. Lightly, he brushes a smear of dirt off of his arm. 

He emerges from the bathroom clean, like normal. His movements are all so weak, like maybe the poison has cut deeper than he expected, straight to his muscles. On the bed, Mr. Stark sits, hands ready with an oversized mug of tea. ‘I have it all taken care of,’ he says quickly, slowly,  _ slowly _ reaching out to rub Peter’s shoulder. 

He slumps forward. ‘Thanks.’ The voice is soft and fragile, an unrealistic pitch. 

Peter can still taste soil.

**Author's Note:**

> i hope this was enjoyed! leave a comment or a kudos to make my day!!
> 
> concrit is also welcome <3


End file.
